Stronger Strategy: Two New Board Seats

Imagine having two seats at your organisation’s board table or your project’s board – one for the planet and one for the children.

In the prince2 project methodology a board is an equal number of customers and supplier representatives – that is, people who’ll receive the result of the project and those supplying the bits to bring it to be. I’ve seen this work well as the two important stakeholders have a voice.

Throw in the planet and the children and BOOM we’ve got the future represented. So simple. So sweet.

Thanks to BFry for the origin of these thoughts by Peta Kelly in this podcast {really worth a listen – go beyond the different language used and listen to the end}.

My aim is for brevity, clean design, clear credibility, interesting offerings, and having sites we use as examples to inspire others.

Thanks to Kimberley & Ryan for the inspiration and insight.

quick LinkedIn upgrade

I’ve a new LinkedIn look. It only took a few minutes thanks to quick creative from Canva (so simple!). Thanks to Fabien for the tip of the colourful ring around the profile photo to standout in a LinkedIn search.

Trust, growth and optimising sales

In Dan Pink’s “To Sell is Human” book he mentioned we’re now all in sales.

In the past few weeks I’ve been optimising a system to connect clients with large volumes of relevant potential customers. It could be called sales.

In refining this system, I’ve realised that now there is a massive opportunity to quickly find people online who connect with you as an individual – to find the people who will be inspired to quickly become customers, be ultra-helpful in sharing your business via word of mouth, as well as helping find answers.

The thing is, now you can connect with anyone. You don’t want to be connected to everyone. Business is fast and there are loads of messages, notifications and as the volume increases, people increasingly look for people they trust.

Being connected to highly relevant people who ‘get’ your way of thinking, your values/philosophies, your work and style… people who trust you… means you can quickly gain answers, do business together, ask for connections to potential customers and more.

LinkedIn and other social media services provide quick messaging. If you’re connected with highly relevant and engaged people you have less noise in your network and you can quickly message and create progress.

And that’s the key!

I’ve been saying for years: grow your relevant online audience, find your “niche-niche” people – the very select group of people in the world who know and respect you. Don’t bulk up your LinkedIn connections for the sake of likes and numbers, grow your relevant audience so you connect and engage with people who’ll take action.

Start now – type in a topic of interest in LinkedIn search and refine the search to your city. Click on ten profiles, read their summaries and if you’re inspired by what you read and see, hit connect. (Leave the others.) When connecting, include a message that explains why you’re interested in their perspective and what you’d like to learn from them. Be real and honest!

Just in case you’re listening to a Tim Ferriss podcast I’ve recommended and can’t bear the first few minutes, know that I generally skip the first four minutes so I’m straight into the introduction and interview. May that be useful!

Books that you miss upon finishing.

VR/AR leaders often recommend it to experience one of our possible futures: ultra-simulation (in 2045). The impressive narration by Wil Wheaton often had me chuckling, the detail in the book astounded me and of course it was fun to hear the vast number of (familiar) 1980’s references.

Favourite reads & listens

What senses would you extend?Neil Harbisson talks about going from full colourblindness to installing an antenna so he could hear sound. Apparently the cleaning product isle in the supermarket is like a fun nightclub! It’s an uplifting, fascinating, futuristic, 9:35min watch. Actually even the first few minutes is worth it to imagine a new dimension for you.Photo credit: Ted.com

Rolling Stone followed Elon around for months.Here are a few quotes that struck me:

The Websummit opening remarks are a great call for designers, creators, entrepreneurs and technologists to focus on building tech that is useful and fair for society. Included are: Stephen Hawking on AI, Bryan Johnson on HI, a regulator’s view of Facebook and other ultra powerful tech companies.

Great presence

Thanks for the laugh David Roberts (of Innovation and Disruption at Singularity University). Here is his bio: “His fascination with technology began In fourth grade after building a hovering electric drone, to carry his younger sister to the bus stop, powered by what was formerly his mother’s vacuum cleaner, and fortunately limited by the length of an electric power cord.”Have you added humour to yours?

PS. One of the companies and experiences that have most impressed me in the last couple of years is Manly Ocean Adventures. Knowledgeable, exceptional value, and thoughtful, they’re advertising their incredible experiences (with or without whales) as great Christmas gift ideas. If you’re near Sydney or your people are… this could be for you!

PPS. in a previous email I wrote about the Apple Airpods. My update from a month of using them is that I’m still loving the earphones quick change between computer and iPhone and watch phonecall pickup. I am missing the ease of the Jaybirds hanging around my neck. The Airpods are a bit more of a cognitive load for me. They’re fiddly to remember where they are / to put in my pocket when I’m on the move and I sense I’ve a higher risk of losing them. Jaybird X2 Sport were around my neck all the time and I could use one or two earphones and never think about the battery or getting into the practice of taking out one Airpod during a long phonecall to make sure I have enough battery. The tech of the Airpods is beautiful and clever and it’s wonderful they can be used across many bluetooth devices – not just Apple’s. Airpods around the neck!?!

Saving Time.

I originally bought an Apple watch to open myself to possibilities I couldn’t predict. Sometimes it’s best to say “yes” and explore rather than wonder.

Regularly I use the watch to quickly view messages and respond (often with a thumbs up or other emoticon), receive a phone call while I’m on the move / doing chores and it’s great to ask Siri to set timers for cooking (5 minutes works well for soft-boiled eggs).

I’m now happily wearing my new series 3 Apple watch and am impressed with the long battery life, being able to call people without the phone around and the faster speed. Well done Apple!

I’m looking forward to more accurate exercise (read: skiing) data and more time savings via Siri and the clever tech incorporated. I’ve found Siri improves the more I use/speak to her and the recent Apple event inspired me to explore more of the new functionality that’s increasingly like having an assistant… on your wrist!

Roadtrip Meetings.

If autonomous cars change the interior layout of cars and you can eat, sleep, work, watch a movie, have a meeting… will you go on roadtrips with your colleagues? will the workforce be more ‘on the move’? Will people travel more? go to and stay in more remote places?

Happy travels…

A Quick Tip on Financial Diversification.

“I like a mix of cash (t-bills, money market funds, etc), blue chips stocks (Amazon, Google, etc), real estate (income producing with little to no leverage), and a risk bucket (venture capital, crypto, etc). I think 25% in each would be a good mix.” thanks Fred.

Fred Wilson’s tips on providing hope to others:“Of course, how you worry is critical. You can’t weigh down the leadership teams with your worries. You can’t fill up the board meetings with angst.You have to be supportive, optimistic, encouraging, and positive in your interactions with founder/leaders and their teams. But you must also flag areas where there could be trouble. Getting that balance right has been a work in progress for me for my entire career.So being a worrier is an important characteristic in an investor. But you have to mostly keep those worries to yourself and your partners/team (this is a place where partners are invaluable). And you have to decide when a worry is significant enough to share it with your portfolio companies and then you need to find the right moment and narrative to communicate it. When you do it right, the teams appreciate it immensely.”

Welcome to the 36th edition of this email. Did you know you can read past editions right here?

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Winning Newsletters

While enjoying the Wilsons’ newsletters (Fred and Joanne), I’ve ‘gotten’ a bit more of why they’ve written regularly for so long.

The thing is, you can start a newsletter for business development, marketing, self expression and other reasons and my recent experience is there’s more to this regular activity.

Here’s an update on what I’ve noticed:

Each fortnight I’ve the opportunity to get onto ‘paper’ what’s currently on my mind that’d be useful to others.

As more peers, colleagues, people in my network, friends and family show interest in new business and life opportunities (such as blockchain tech and cryptocurrencies), I can easily forward previous emails knowing they include easy to pick up introductory links after I’ve distilled much reading.

I’ve a timeline of my interests since I started writing. I like this.

It’s fun to engage. People send fascinating and lovely replies.

My writing and choice of subjects has (naturally) refined as have my systems (for example, collating links throughout the fortnight in one place) and use of tech such as Mailchimp’s new editing feature on their smartphone app.

Having written each fortnight for a year and a half, I’ve a fun sense of achievement and I’m a bit in awe!

I’ve published previous emails on LinkedIn and gain comments there. My Linked profile (online resume / CV) shows more of my expertise, interests and style. Opportunities have come from this and possibly I appear in more (relevant) LinkedIn searches.

Marketing via cryptocurrencies.

“Burger King launched its own cryptocurrency known as – what else? – WhopperCoin. The new currency was launched as part of a rewards program for the company’s customers in Russia. With each purchase of a Whopper customers will receive a WhopperCoin token in a digital wallet. …WhopperCoin owners can either use them to purchase products at Burger King or trade or sell them to other interested parties.”

Deep Work

“In this new economy, three groups will have a particular advantage: those who can work well and creatively with intelligent machines, those who are the best at what they do, and those with access to capital.”

“To remain valuable in our economy, therefore, you must master the art of quickly learning complicated things. This task requires deep work.
If you don’t cultivate this ability, you’re likely to fall behind as technology advances.”

Cal’s book is fascinating with quickly actionable tips and this is a great list by Ryan Holiday on how he does deep work. Fascinating.

Things getting too heavy?

“Piaggio recently unveiled the company’s first product, a personal cargo robot named Gita. The bot can carry up to 40 pounds autonomously using maps, or by following a human operating the bot’s path… It’s fast enough to keep up with you on a bike (22MPH), and [has] the “human agility” needed to navigate sidewalks.” via Peter Diamandis

Gita and other helpful-to-humans technology excites me! You too?

Self-driving cars: coming sooner

Recently in conversations I’ve suggested we’ll use self-driving cars sooner than expected, for a couple of reasons:

With so many other things to do, see, read, watch, catch up on (including sleep), car driving will start to be less of interest compared to other things we could do.

As more images of newly designed car interiors (movie cinema, sleeping pod, working space / shared office) appear the idea of the car being a location to do other things than drive will grow on us… quickly.